China has banned movement in a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and has also deployed military reservists as the rapidly spreading 'stealth omicron' variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.The east Asian country of China has locked down a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and has also deployed military reservists on Monday as the rapidly spreading “stealth omicron" variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.
What is 'Stealth Omicron' Variant?
According to reports, much of the current outbreak is being driven by the variant commonly known as “stealth omicron" or the B.A.2 lineage of the Omicron variant.The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) announced it is investigating a sub-lineage of the omicron coronavirus variant—known as BA.2 and named by some scientists as “stealth omicron".
The “stealth omicron" variant has been reported to spread faster than the original omicron, which itself spread faster than the original virus and other variants, according to early research.
Omicron variant had fueled the third wave of the pandemic that affected the world.
The World Health Organization (WHO) does not yet consider BA.2 to be a “variant of concern" but is continuing to monitor its spread. BA.2 is beginning to replace the original Omicron strain in many countries.
According to reports, it is now the dominant variant in Denmark, which recorded more than 50,000 new infections in just one day last week. BA.2 also appears to be the major Omicron lineage in parts of India and the Philippines. It has already caused about 250 cases in the United States and been identified in more than half the states.
The BA.2 subvariant likely arose from a common ancestor around the same time as the original Omicron, also known as BA.1, so it is not a descendent but a sibling, says Cornelius Römer, a bioinformatician at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The BA.2 has been sometimes dubbed a stealth variant because it is missing key mutations in its spike protein that are necessary for rapid PCR tests to distinguish it from previous variants, such as Delta. This difference also may be why BA.2 escaped attention earlier.
The two Omicron lineages have evolutionary divergences from each other than the differences between the original virus and the Alpha variant, the first variant of concern. “BA.2 shares over 30 mutations with BA.1, but it also has 28 unique mutations," says Shay Fleishon, an evolutionary geneticist and advisor to the Central Virology Laboratory in Israel.
The National Health Commission reported 1,337 locally transmitted cases in the latest 24-hour period, including 895 in the industrial province of Jilin. A government notice said that police permission would be required for people to leave the area or travel from one city to another.
In Beijing, several buildings were sealed off over the weekend. Residents said they were willing to follow the zero-tolerance policies despite any personal impact.
The hard-hit province sent 7,000 reservists to help with the response, from keeping order and registering people at testing centers to using drones to carry out aerial spraying and disinfection, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Hundreds of cases were reported in other provinces and cities along China's east coast and inland as well. Beijing, which had six news cases, and Shanghai, with 41, locked down residential and office buildings where infected people had been found.
Hundreds of cases were reported in other provinces and cities along China's east coast and inland as well. Beijing, which had six news cases, and Shanghai, with 41, locked down residential and office buildings where infected people had been found.
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